We're celebrating Klordny Week, Superboy!

Well, the next update would be the election, and that's tomorrow, so I guess I'd better get off these things I've been sitting on.

October 8
[Aberrant] Mark Anthony Green writes in his journal: "It seems cruel that the Lord told us of Heaven. [Earth] is a satisfying world in many ways...but God dangles Heaven above us like a man teasing his dog." He opines that to attain great power — to erupt as a nova, for instance, or to be elected President — is to become like God, and vows that "If I become like God, I will not tease the people with stories of Heaven. I will teach them to love the world they have."

That's a vague relief, even if it's not clear he'd expected them to act on that love, and even though he considers power the defining attribute of a Godness.

October 9
[Aberrant] Soguk Birlesme, a baseline post-doctoral assisting Dr. Dmitri Kasheyev in his fusion research, writes home to his parents in Thailand about a recent accident at work in whose resolution he got to see Dr. Kasheyev's powers in action.

The previous week, Dr. Kasheyev had returned to the DAIKOKU facility from the inertial containment lab, after "some sort of quarrel" whose nature was a mystery to Soguk. Without Kasheyev's ability to sense subatomic structures, and his ability to solve the relevant equations even more precisely than DAIKOKU's computers, the research had stalled.

On the 8th, Dr. Nakazawa decided to show Kasheyev a test-run of a "plasma configuration we'd had some luck with." Kasheyev didn't think this was wise necessarily, and it turned out he was right: "the plasma tied itself in knots and burned a hole in the containment tube!" The plasma jet wouldn't have hurt Soguk (200,000,000° sounds like a lot, "but the plasma is so thin and dissipates so quickly that it doesn't have time to burn"), but Kasheyev threw himself in its path anyway, and "his whole body glowed" when it struck him.

Neither of them was hurt, but they went to see the doctor anyway. The doctor recommended Soguk take the day off, and he was so light-headed he agreed. The next day, the DAIKOKU staff discussed the accident only in terms of preventing a repeat. Only time will tell what effects the whole thing had.

Okay, okay...

April
[Aberrant] This month's Car and Driver contains an article on hypercombustion and fuel-cell engines, "Gas-Guzzlers: Goodbye for Good in Japan" by Jean Ingalls.

Two years ago, the Japanese government announced that a ban on the sale of vehicles with old-school internal-combustion engines would go into effect this year. That effect is now in.

April?
[Aberrant] Belizean investor Ricardo Mendez's dismembered body is found packed into a crate in a warehouse he owns in Belmopan. Also found in the warehouse are the bodies of numerous tropical birds, apparently packed for illegal shipment out of the country to pet shops.

The bodies provide the motive for the murder. My tags show who had the means and the opportunity.

In OTL, they've been trying to achieve this goal for over 20 years.

February 29
[Aberrant] The Boeing Aerospace Company unveils the first civilian hypersonic jet.

According to the Seattle Times' Jeff Skagen, the 797's top speed is Mach 20, putting any point on Earth just 45 minutes away from any other point.

I was going to say "recently" in the TU, but the items labeled "February" may not all have happened yet.

February
[Aberrant] CNN reports that South Africa is instituing a pilot program requiring novas within its borders to wear radio beacons, allegedly due to misbehavior by elites from Nigeria pitching liberties in Capetown. Geryon decides that the man behind the project, Minister of Home Affairs Malcolm Chigwedere, needs to have his head launched, no matter what his Pantheon colleagues may say about no violence, and gets help in the endeavor from Epoch, Leviathan (who later shrugs "telling Geryon not to commit violence is like telling a baby not to piss itself") and the Confederate.

I think that one speaks for itself pretty well. I almost missed including the next two items. Speaking of the Confed...

Natalya "Swarm Queen" Dornova sends a note to Allison "Shrapnel" Hughes warning her that Barry Meldrum is going too far, from his alliance with Alafin Sango to the massacres, of baseline and nova alike, that follow him everywhere he goes.

She understands her (rumored) occasional lover's hatred of baselines and agrees that "[t]hey have to be taught a lesson," but doesn't think extermination of the monkeys is the way to go about it. "I realize that Bahrain must fall and that Tarik is blocking us, but what can Sango get us that we can't get ourselves — besides genocide?"

This month's Scientific American includes the article "Quantum Force Manipulations and the Mind" by Dr. Shawn Worth.

Briefly, Worth theorizes that nova powers merely "magnify and externalize" the manipulation of quantum forces inherent in the quantum-level nature of consciousness.

An internal Directive memo on Pantheon Productions, Narcosis' corporate arm; its entertainment powerhouse status and diversified holdings; and its Teragen ties.

"A number of reports seem to suggest that PP is heavily involved in drug trafficking.... More disturbing is the possibility that PP is one of the leading manufacturers of soma — a fact that makes PP a danger to baselines and novas alike."

February 3
[Aberrant] First airing of History Channel documentary Homo Sapiens Novus.

An exploration of the role of novas in modern society from N-Day to now.

N!'s Beautiful Nova OpCasts live from the Calcutta premiere of Narcosis' new movie One God. It is the last time host Jeffrey Hiens is seen on the air.

Maybe even the last time he's seen alive.

Case-file T2M-020308-TP0019 is filed by Thanorm Prakarnchai, executive assistant to the director of T2M-Asia/Pacific. It concerns what appears to be Heaven Thunder Triad underwriting of Papaver somniferum (opium poppy) cultivation in the highlands of North Vietnam.

Prakarnchai recommends that a T2Mer surveil of the farms to confirm the nature of their crop, then "counsel the farmers on more productive farming methods, using whatever means necessary to persuade them." After that, continued surveillance, "and should they falter in their responsibilities to international law, a team will destroy their contraband crops and will arrest the criminals involved." (Nice bureaucratese there.)

Maria "Rattler" Cabral writes in her journal about the Cult of Mal gathering she recently attended in Paris.

The whole experience is already starting to fade, to become an episode. She suspects something in the communion chalice the Apostle gave her is to blame. On the one hand, there's a lot of truth in his words; on the other hand, he takes those truths in dangerous directions. "If we don't stop him soon, I fear the worst — then again maybe we need to purge our ranks?" Delorimier has turned #13 Rue de Temple into, well, a temple to the Beacon Mal, one where Cabral could almost feel The One's presence.

Having been there from the beginning, Delorimier knows or at least guesses that Mal's eruption predates the Galatea explosion, though he doesn't seem aware of the Donighal's personal responsibility for the event. He warns that when The One comes out of his Chrysalis, "he'll lead those with pure hearts to the Promised Land, casting the rest aside to the baseline lions."

Rattler experienced a moment of doubt, but Marcel's voice washed it away along with the room: "...some hide behind masks and riddles, afraid to take the leap and follow Mal. They may be Terats now, but tomorrow, who knows?... Open yourself and accept the Will of Mal."

An even more tenuous common thread.

January 20
[Aberrant] The German Ministry of Transport, Construction and Housing announces plans to link the nation's major cities with high-speed maglev trains.

In OTL, they're talking about one maglev service, from Munich to Franz Josef Strauss International. (Maybe in the TU, they'll reactivate the Hamburg and Berlin maglines.)

[Aberrant] Anna DeVries sends a letter to Linda "Lotus Infinite" Raphael attempting to persuade her in favor of accepting a full-time DeVries contract, offering as an inducement the care of DeVries' paraphysician if Raphael's current aberrations worsen.

Lotus' most obvious current aberration is that her hair constantly swirls as if in a gentle imaginary wind; she's taken to shaving her head to hide that.

Yeah, I've been dragging my heels on this. Mostly the transition to a new flashdrive, with a possible subconscious dose of "Maybe if I don't do it this year, I can pretend that the tragedy of May 13 doesn't happen."

January
[Aberrant] This month's issue of Humanity magazine (v.1 #4) contains Gwan Myung-sun's article "The Day the Coconuts Fell Without a Sound", on the disappointing reaction of Utopia to a personal complaint by the families of people killed in a T2MA/P raid on a Nakato-gumi warehouse.

The name sounds Korean, but somehow, I don't think of Koreans as using metaphors like "the ripe coconuts of our hearts". Then again, given what White Wolf's writers of the time were able to say straight-faced about northern Europe and the southwestern US, it probably shouldn't be surprising that they can be equally de-informed about Asia.

[Aberrant] Nathan Black hosts the N! special The New Gods: Humanity's Next Step.

It includes a demonstration of electrical power by Detroit franchisee* and part-time Utopian Jonas "Kikjak" Kincaid.

January 3
[Aberrant] This week's issue of Newsweek carries an article "Eruption of Wonder: Science in the Nova Age" by Dr. Paul Tandy.

Here in OTL, I'm not sure there was an issue of Newsweek for that week (it would've been cover-dated January 7, I think).

January 7
[Aberrant] Amanda Wu, CEO of Novelty Consulting, sends congratulations to all researchers and analysts working on "the Kim project" (a planned land-grab by North Korea).

First time I've had occasion to mention her, and I wish it were going to be the last.

* Licensed urban defender.

This looks like a good day for SCIENCE!

September 13
[Aberrant] Dr. Sarah Lewis, director of the Brooks L. Miller Center for Biosciences Research at Georgia Tech, presents a paper on "The Genetic Basic of Homo sapiens novus" (funded by the Triton Foundation).

It took her and her team five years of research, but she found the common genetic sequences that differentiate novas from baselines in introns. Testing of "30 researchers at our lab" found only one with those intron sequences, and "[h]er excitement over the find" is believed to have triggered her eruption a few days later. Finally, a double-blind test with six novas and 4,999,994 baselines found that "[a]ll six of the Homo sapiens novus samples showed the DNA sequencing, while none of the Homo sapiens samples did."

She also discourses on the mechanisms of eruption and node development, to the extent they're understood, and with acknowledgement of the bits that aren't understood (such as "[t]he mechanism by which the Mazarin-Rashoud node changes or expands after its initial genesis").

Her conclusion notes that the answers have brought extra questions with them, such as "why novas have continued to appear with greater frequency" for so long after the Galatea explosion. She ends on a "purely speculative note" re: the triggering mechanism that has led to these introns expressing now: "it could be a case of spot evolution, or perhaps even outside source influence."

And so we return and begin again.

2001
[Aberrant] Talk radio's Jordan McDevitt Show invites listeners to weigh in on the topic of "legal restrictions for novas, good idea or bad precedent?" Dan from Philadelphia is glad T2M did an end-run around the law to cripple the New York Mafia; Richard in New Jersey is equally happy about that, but less sanguine about what happens when (not if, but when) T2M decides to enforce much tighter codes of behavior, on ordinary citizens.

I keep forgetting it's not all a chair of bowlies at this point in the TU.

2003
[Aberrant] Henri Mazarin and Farah Rashoud receive the Nobel Prize in biology for their pioneering research into nova physiology and the discovery of the M-R node.

And, here in the real world, I decided to start doing these posts in something like the "This day in Trinity Universe history" format. I was seriously considering whether to continue the $display_past_event function once I get all caught up (end of January, I'm still pretty sure); now I figure, between the Memories section and wolfspoor's "On a day like today" zone (thanks again, etherlad), that portion's covered.

Presented with not much comment, because my life isn't giving me time to write much comments. Sorry.

1998
[Aberrant] Drs. Mazarin and Rashoud release their findings on the discovery of a unique gland found in the brains of novas. This Mazarin-Rashoud (M-R) node is believed to be the root of a nova's abilities. Novas officially dubbed subspecies Homo sapiens novus. The Triton Foundation provides funding for Mazarin and Rashoud's research, and much of the other nova research over the next decade. A nova's powers are theorized to derive from manipulation of the basic forces of the universe, also known as the quantum forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force. The M-R node allows the nova some degree of channeling and control over the quantum forces.

When I go through and mark all these posts as memories, "Farah Rashoud" is definitely going to be one of the keywords I use.

2002
[Aberrant] A subway bombing in Tokyo brings world attention to Kamisama Buddhism, a hybrid of Shinto and Buddhist beliefs (novas being venerated as "bodhisattvas" or feared as "asuras") that is increasingly popular with Japanese youths. While Kamisama Buddhism professes non-violence, the media play up the suspects' involvement with the sect. Three young fanatics are charged in the bombing, though the leader of the religion, nova guru Bodhisattva Masato, disavows any foreknowledge of the attack.

And "Novas and religion" is probably going to be another keyword.

2003
[Aberrant] According to the Weekly World News, "Lost Biblical passages reveal the truth: Jesus was a nova!"

If I'd remembered this last year, I'd have blogged it live. It's just too good to miss.

And this.

2004
[Aberrant] The hypercombustion engine is released. Designed by nova Tetsuo Yamato, the hypercombustion engine is a super-efficient internal combustion engine, suitable for consumer and industrial applications. It boasts a tenfold decrease in fuel consumption while increasing power by a like amount. Within the decade, all automotive transportation and fossil-fuel-based electric production use hypercombustion engines exclusively.

Another thing that ratchets down Mideast tensions from those of OTL, I'd say.